A Prologue
by Shaoli
Summary: A Prologue really is all this short fic is. If there was a story attached to it, I've forgotten! Just getting everyone into character. It's a cheery piece. Do have a look.


"My hat!!!"  
  
It was a cry the crew of the Goin' Merry heard several times a day. A tattered straw sun-hat bounced like a ball of tumbleweed across the swaying deck, driven swiftly by a lively breeze. Bouncing along right behind and grappling for both hat and foothold was the ship's captain, a most unlikely figure, a spindly youth with wild hair and wilder eyes.  
  
"Ruffy!!!"  
  
That was also a cry heard several times a day, aimed this time at the scrambling, screaming persuer of the straw hat. Ruffy had just barrelled past the Merry's most unusual feature, Nami's tangerine garden. Nami herself had been kneeling in the soft soil, pruning the lower branches of the largest bush. Leaping up and reaching with an arm that seemed, just for the slightest moment, too long for his smallish frame, the captain had nicked a bright orange fruit from that bush, sending leaves, branches and several ripe tangerines flying in the backlash from his wild grab, some battering an enraged Nami, others falling toward a figure reclined on the deck below.  
  
Zoro had long learned to sleep through all the ship's common commotions, but a spattering of ripe fruit in the face was quite another matter. The crew's only swordsman winced as the mildly acid juice trickled off his stiff green hair and stung his eyes. Grumbling a vague curse, Zoro scrubbed the offending liquid from his face and watched with a resigned air as Ruffy continued his hat chase.  
  
Breath coming hard through his nose and a large tangerine crammed into his mouth, Ruffy's fingers closed around the rim of his hat just as it went over the rail at starboard quarter, the momentum slamming him into the rail itself. The youth's jaws clamped shut at the impact, and he was left with a mouthful of bitter, fragrant rind as the rest of the tangerine plummeted into the churning sea.  
  
"Aargh! No!" It was no idle protest the boy made, as this time his right arm did stretch many times its normal length, like so much chewed bubblegum, plunging into the water in pursuit of the fruit.  
  
The arm came up two seconds later with a vicious fanged fish gnawing at the end of it, and its owner in another screaming fit.  
  
Nami continued to prune, and Zoro curled up where he was, fighting a vague and creeping sense of despair which disappeared with his fist snore. The door to the ship's cabin swung open, and an irate voice carrying a vaguely french accent drifted out.  
  
"What in heck is going on out there?"  
  
The voice's only reply was a howl as the captain sped past the garden again, hat restored on his head and a fish with needle spines and bulging eyes and huge teeth at the end of one arm. As Ruffy wrestled with the rabid fish on the deck, a trail of smoke wafted its way out of the cabin door, followed by the ship's cook, a blond-haired young fellow with a cigarette clamped between his teeth, who took a moment to adjust his tie and to smile adoringly at Nami, who ignored him, before turning to frown at his captain's undignified thrashing. With a sigh, he began to make his way over the rail, when a skinny figure elbowed past him, clambering onto the wooden beam.  
  
"I'll save you, Captain!" It was Ussop, youngest of the crew next to Ruffy, and the ship's best gunman and carpenter. Standing astride the beam, he snapped his prized goggles into place, and, taking aim with his slingshot, released his homemade bullet with an unneccessary flourish. Ruffy, who had been thumping his stubborn little attacker repeatedly on the floor, looked up just as the shot connected with the source of his--present--distress, and engulfed the fish, as well as Ruffy's arm, in a ball of yellow flame.  
  
The fire lasted merely seconds, and Ruffy emerged only slightly singed. Now he sat calmly munching on his former assailiant, which had been fried to a crisp, as the rest of the crew (save the still-snoozing Zoro) milled about the ship, making adjustments to the sail, the wind having picked up again after a brief lull.  
  
"I don't like the look of this weather," called Nami to no one in particular, basket of gardening tools in one hand as she scanned the sky. "We'll see a storm within the hour." No one questioned this suggestion, clear as the sky seemed. Nami was never wrong.  
  
"Sanji, get the tarp for my garden, will you? The rest of you keep the sails up for now, we need to make as much headway as possible before the storm hits."  
  
"Yes, my love!" was the cook's giddy reply as he descended obediently into the hatch to get the plastic covering Nami requested. Ruffy tossed the remains of the unforunate sea creature, mere bone picked completely clean, overboard, and wondered about dinner as he went to help Ussop with the rigging. The rising wind was whipping the skinny sharpshooter around the pole as he tussled with the ropes, doing a maypole dance with the mast without ever touching the ground.  
  
Zoro snored.  
  
*******************************************  
  
The green-haired swordsman awoke with a sneeze. Rain fell like a translucent curtain from the black sky, sloshing about the deck and drenching him in salty cold. He sighed. There had to be some sort of cure for this ridiculous habit of his. He'd sleep through anything if he felt no threat in his immediate surroundings. Usually it was on board the Merry. The only other time in his life he'd had such unguarded comfort was back at the dojo; back home.  
  
Zoro had to smile as he picked himself off the deck and squelched towards the cabin. Home was here now! He grinned wider at the thought. He liked life simple, and thus he strove to keep it so. Running into Ruffy had been an accident. Life had never beem more exciting, and at the same time, so wonderfully uncomplicated.  
  
One never could depend on circumstance for simplicity, not with a name known across the two seas; not with a price big enough to purchase a small village on your head. It was Ruffy's path through these strange situations that never wavered from its certain course: beat up the bad guy, and aid the helpless.  
  
His sharp hearing picked up the sound of a voice over the hammering rain, and Zoro cast a glance toward the ship's bow. Outlined against the storm- darkened sky was the captain and his straw hat, sitting on the ram figurehead at the ship's bow. Behind the figure to the right stood Nami in her yellow raincoat, shaking a finger at Ruffy whilst her other hand struggled to keep a water-proof map open and a compass upright at the same time.  
  
For no reason he could put into words, Zoro began to hum a tune he had heard in his childhood as he turned once more toward the dry comfort of the cabin. He could not quite remember the lyics, someone had wrote about his childhood hero, the kind who always beat the bad guy and got the girl, but to him they went something like this:  
  
"And the reason that she loved him, was the reason I loved him, too. 'Coz he never wondered what was right or wrong, He just knew. He just knew..."  
  
********************************************  
  
"Did the devil fruit make you immune to disease, too? You'll catch a cold out here!" Nami shouted over the storm.  
  
"I like sitting here!" was Ruffy's stubborn answer. The youth clung like a possum to the smiling figurehead, glaring at Nami as if he expected her to challenge him for the spot. Nami sighed, and went back to reading her map.  
  
A most curious expression flitted across Ruffy's normally wide-eyed countenance. He shuffled from his precariously dangling position on the ram head, sliding down the length of the neck so that he was only about two feet away from Nami. His voice carried that innocent tone only he was capable of.  
  
"Nami, are you happy?"  
  
Nami looked up and sneezed, a corner of the map whipping her in the face and her feet and hair soaking wet despite the raincoat. "What??" was her incredulous answer.  
  
"Um..."Ruffy searched for words. For a while he didn't find any.  
  
Nami was suddenly nervous. The youth seemed a little distant for a moment, and for good measure his bright, black eyes had settled upon her face as he searched his seldom-used and not-too-extensive vocabulary.  
  
"Don't you ever leave, ok?" he chirped, leaping over her head and onto the swaying deck. "I promise never to make you cry." And he went below deck, stretching and yawning.  
  
Nami stared after her captain, and smiled. 


End file.
